Cooking Failures

Tag: food

  • Roll With It… The Thanksgiving with No Rolls

    “Please don’t insist on making a whole turkey this year,” my mother begged me. 

    I was slightly insulted because I had loved making a whole turkey for Thanksgiving the last two years. But then she reminded me that they were both disasters and at least one, and possibly both, were still frozen. I guess I’d forgotten that part.

    I just remembered the excitement of feeling like I was in a Norman Rockwell painting when I stuffed the little bird with a lemon and an onion and I tied up his cute little feet. I made a little butter mixture with herbs, and I rubbed it all over him like I was giving him a little massage. I talked to him while I gave him a little massage. I told him how cute he was and what a good little bird he was as I got under the skin. I was having so much fun rubbing all the goop into him, that I think half an hour had passed before my mom said, “I think he’s good.”

    I’ve always wanted to be able to make a perfect Thanksgiving turkey. The kind you see in cheesy Christmas movies that are brown and sitting on the table with happy faces surrounding them. That was going to be my Thanksgiving.

    But I do remember last year I called my mom in the kitchen with a finger to my lips and showed her that the turkey was not done at all. Together, we played it off though, and she cut off the parts that were cooked, and she cooked them a little more and we hid the frozen turkey parts. It worked fine and nobody questioned why there was such a small amount of turkey when they saw me massaging a great huge turkey earlier in the day. No one knew that the Thanksgiving turkey was a disaster and still frozen. Well, except my mom and me.

    I was telling the story to a friend who said, “Well, why didn’t you look online and get a turkey recipe there?”

    “Really? What? That’s a brilliant idea. Did you think I just came up with an idea in my mind on how to make a Thanksgiving turkey? Of course not! Of course I looked online and I got a recipe for the best Thanksgiving turkey ever!” I replied sarcastically.

    I was a little offended that he didn’t give me enough credit to look up a recipe online before I attempted to make the best Thanksgiving turkey ever.

    “Well”, he said, “you don’t follow the instructions when you make brownies.”

    Nobody follows the instructions when they make brownies. Especially not me. I don’t need instructions for making brownies. I’ve been making brownies for 40 years (although ever since my sister pointed out that I made the brownies wrong a couple months ago, I am more careful about reading the instructions but this is completely different).

    I was telling another friend this story and she said, “Well, you know, you have to defrost it in the fridge for days, right?”

    Yes! Of course, I know that. And I did just that. I defrosted it for like five days! And it was still frozen. I don’t understand.

    “Did you defrost it in the fridge or in the freezer?” my friend asked.

    Gosh, people must really think I’m an idiot. I guess if I have a blog called Cooking Failures and people have read about my many cooking mishaps, I can understand them questioning my cooking knowledge.

    But yes, I looked it up online. I looked up multiple recipes to find the best one. The one I used had the word BEST in the title so I figured that would be the best. I defrosted it for the suggested time. I poked it and it was nice and soft. I followed the directions perfectly and still; it came out a disaster.

    I think the year before nobody ate it. They said it was great but yet, nobody ate it. Except my mom. She eats everything. I don’t even think my brother ate it and he eats everything, too! There were tons of leftovers for Mom.

    Don’t forget that I’m a vegetarian so I don’t actually eat the turkey. So, I really don’t care what it taste like as long as everyone else eats it, even if it’s only to be polite. I guess I should have a serious talk with my family about that.

    So, this year, my mom begged me not to try the whole turkey thing again and just get a turkey breast. I was a little sad about giving up my dream, but also, sometimes you just have to give up.

    I did spend days after the past two Thanksgivings worrying that I gave my family salmonella so it will be nice not to have that worry. I have plenty of other worries though so don’t worry about me being worry free.

    Honestly, I wasn’t even really sure what a turkey breast was. I just knew it was simpler than a whole turkey. Don’t people always buy turkey breasts from the grocery store? And isn’t it always on sandwiches and stuff?  I figured it would be easy to cook, and I wouldn’t have to do any prep work. 

    I had been ordering groceries for Thanksgiving all week. I’ve had them all in my cart and I was adding them daily. I figured I would pick them up on Wednesday so they won’t sit in my fridge too long and besides, that gives me up until the last minute to put in everything I may have forgotten. I always forget something. 

    I pick up my groceries and I’m patting myself on the back for being all prepared as I’m putting them away in the refrigerator and singing Christmas songs. Then I pull out the turkey breast and it’s frozen. Frozen?!?! A turkey breast is frozen too? I flip it over and skim the instructions and it says it needs to thaw 1 to 3 days. 1 to 3 days?!?! Oh no! This is a disaster. For some reason, I thought I was ordering an already thawed Turkey breast! Do they not have that? Is that not a thing? I should’ve ordered my groceries earlier!

    It’s OK, I tell myself. It’s early on Wednesday. I have plenty of time to figure this out, so my family does not once again, need to eat a frozen turkey for Thanksgiving. I decide I will run to the grocery store and I will just buy an already thawed turkey breast. I will save this frozen one for another day.

    I go to the fancy grocery store. I’m proud of myself for my genius idea to save the day. Well, ALL the turkey breasts in the grocery store are frozen. I guess that’s what they do? Obviously, I’m not a turkey breast expert. I didn’t go to turkey breast school.

    So, I start googling it and I skim the back of the turkey breast again and it says that for the size of the turkey breast I have, it only needs 24 hours to defrost. Phew! because we have 24 hours. That was a close call.  

    The really funny part is, the next day on Thanksgiving, when we were taking the thawed turkey breast out to cook, my sister, (who’s really good at reading instructions), said, “Oh wow! You can cook this turkey breast from frozen. It doesn’t need to be thawed. See?” And she shows me where it says COOK FROM FROZEN on the front in big letters. 

    I really know that I need to read things more carefully and stop just skimming things thinking I can get the point.

    So this Thanksgiving, the turkey breast was a hit. It came out perfectly. But what was not a hit were the rolls.

    My youngest son has celiac so, weeks before Christmas, I searched for gluten-free stuffing(which was a huge hit by the way), gluten-free desserts and gluten-free dinner rolls.

    I found a company that looked good and ordered some gluten-free dinner rolls from them. They said they would be delivered between November 24 and November 26, which was just perfect. They ended up just being delivered yesterday, December 1, so that was out for Thanksgiving.

    Months ago, I had ordered some gluten-free crescent rolls. They came in a little packet, and I almost died when I read the instructions on the back because they were so complicated. You had to freeze butter and grate the butter into the flour? I always looked at those crescent rolls and then decided the instructions were too hard and I put them back on the shelf. “I’ll save them for a day when I really want a challenge,” I said to myself. But surprisingly, I never wake up and say, “Today is the day I want a challenge.” Especially not a making-gluten-free-crescent-rolls challenge.

    But the gluten-free crescent rolls were all I had so I guess I was up for a challenge on Thanksgiving. Once again, I skimmed the directions. I thought I was all ahead of myself too because I saw that it needed frozen butter so the night before I cut the right amount of butter and put it in the freezer. Once again, I just skimmed the directions and at the bottom, it said bake 16 to 20 minutes. So that is what I was planning on doing. Once again patting myself on the back for being so prepared.

    The turkey was almost done, and I figured it was time for me to start on these crescent rolls. Gosh, I wish I took a picture because they just looked like a disaster. But the directions were so specific and said things like “use a pizza cutter” and “cut it into 14 squares and roll it this way and that way.” Nobody has time for that so I just took little balls in my hand and shaped them as best I could into crescent rolls shapes.

    I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. How important could all that stuff be? And then I read the instructions more carefully and it said sit them in a warm place for 75 minutes until they double in size! What??? 75 minutes!!! But Thanksgiving dinner is just about ready!

    So, what ended up happening was that we all just ate Thanksgiving with no bread. With no rolls. I had bought the delicious Hawaiian rolls for the rest of the family, but it would be so unfair for everyone else to eat Hawaiian rolls while my little son with celiac has no bread just because I couldn’t read the instructions (which, by the way, I had skimmed multiple times).  We ended up making those rolls anyway later and they tasted like sand, so I’m glad we didn’t wait the 75 minutes to eat.

    The whole family decided to forego Hawaiian rolls all to not hurt a little boy’s feelings. They all gave up the best part of Thanksgiving, so one little boy would not feel left out. 

    That’s really what Thanksgiving is about, isn’t it? Being caring and considerate and thinking of other people’s feelings. It’s about sacrificing even something as delicious as Hawaiian rolls, to keep someone from feeling sad.

    There was plenty of food to eat though and I doubt anyone even really missed the bread. But I will tell you as soon as my youngest son went upstairs, we all did shove our faces with Hawaiian rolls. They are so good! Why do we only buy them at Thanksgiving? 

    The turkey was a success, but the rolls were a disaster. I guess every Thanksgiving needs some sort of disaster. 

    Really, this Thanksgiving taught me that I just need to slow down. Sure, I need to read directions more carefully, but also I need to slow down in life. I’m always in such a rush that I skim instructions, I skim emails, I even skim my daily readings in the morning and even sometimes the book I’m reading. I’m always thinking about the next thing on my list. I’m always thinking about what else I need to get done. I’m always rushing.

    It’s not a race. I don’t need to get to the finish line first. I don’t even need to get everything accomplished in one day. I’m going to slow down. I’m going to take my time. And hopefully next Thanksgiving, I will have read all the instructions perfectly and we will have that Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving. With bread on the table and everything. 

    But this year I am thankful for my mistake. Thankful that I was rushing and messed up because it showed the kindness and compassion of the human spirit. It showed me what family is really all about.  It showed the sacrifices we make for the ones we love. Even if it’s just the Hawaiian rolls.

  • The worst place on earth

    Can we just talk about how hard grocery shopping is? Is grocery shopping hard for anyone else? Yes, I’m a 50 year-old woman who has been grocery shopping for over 25 years now but I still dread it. Why am I so bad at grocery shopping? I didn’t even know it was possible to be bad at grocery shopping. Is grocery shopping a talent? Did I just invent a new thing to be bad at? I hate it! I’d rather go to the dentist. Well that’s not fair because I love the dentist. But that’s a story for a different blog post.

    I can never find anything in the grocery store! I even go to the same grocery store so you would think I would know where things are, but I still have no idea!

    Why can I never find peanut butter or honey? Why don’t they have a sign above the aisle that says peanut butter or honey? I know the signs above the aisles are helpful but what about all those other things you’re looking for that there’s no sign for above the aisle? Why isn’t there a sign for honey? Or peanut butter? Or pine nuts?

    The only thing I do know the location of is the taco stuff. That’s because, if you’ve read my blog, tacos are the only thing I can make successfully. Although lately my kid has not been eating them. But at least I know where taco things are in the grocery store. In case anyone asks me, I can seem knowledgeable. If you see me in the grocery store, please stop and ask me where the taco stuff is just so I can feel like I know something and can be helpful. Taco seasoning, taco shells, I’ve got it, and then after that, I’m lost.

    Does anyone else lose their cart in the grocery store? It happens to me all the time! I can’t be the only one. I remember telling a friend about it who looked at me like I was crazy. Do you know when you’re pushing your cart and you realize you’ve missed something? Which is pretty much how I grocery shop. Do normal people shop so efficiently they don’t miss one thing? When this happens are you really going to turn your whole cart around and push your whole cart all the way back to get that one thing? Or, wouldn’t it be more efficient, to leave your cart there and run back to grab that one thing? So much more faster! That just seems more sensible and logical to me so I do it but when I come back, I can’t find my cart. It’s not where I left it. Or maybe I forgot where I left it, but I think, most likely, it’s not where I left it. I think there’s someone who follows me around the grocery store and moves my cart just to make me feel crazy. (Probably hired by my ex husband. kidding…)

    Also, why do all the carts look the same? It’s so easy to lose my cart if they all look exactly the same. Shouldn’t they switch them up? Different colors or something? That might help. “Oh, I lost my cart but I know it was pink. Let me look for a pink cart parked randomly in the middle of an aisle,” I imagine myself saying.

    Oh! Or what about those wine charms! You know how you go to a fancy party and everyone’s glass of wine is the same so they have those cute little wine charms that you hook to your glass so you don’t you lose your glass? I don’t have any of those wine charms but I think they’re adorable and I feel so fancy when I go to a party and someone hands me a wine glass with a cute little wine charm. They need those for grocery carts. Grocery cart charms. They should keep them by where you get your grocery carts. You pick one and you clip it to your cart and that’s how you know.

    “I’m sorry, sir, that is not your cart. It has the brown teddy bear charm on it and that was my charm. Good try, thief,” I imagine myself saying as I grab my cart back from a little old man. And then roll two feet away to realize it’s really not my cart because there’s salmon in it and most likely there’s more than one teddy bear cart charm. OK, I still need to perfect the grocery store cart charm method, but I really think I’m onto something. Wouldn’t grocery shopping be so much more tolerable if the carts were fun? Maybe I wouldn’t lose mine so often.

    Grocery shopping has always been such an ordeal for me. I don’t know where anything is, I don’t know what I need, I buy too many things I don’t need and nothing that can actually make a meal, and I spend way too much money, and come home to realize I didn’t buy anything I actually needed!! And then I need to go out for essentials like toilet paper and stuff. After I was just at the grocery store. It’s exhausting. I’m tired just thinking about grocery shopping.

    I know, I know, you will say, “Brita, have you ever heard of making a grocery list?” Yes yes, I have. I make grocery lists all the time. I either lose them, forget them or don’t write important things on them. Is it just me or do you think of something really really important you want to write on your grocery list and then by the time you actually have the list and the pen you have no idea what you were going to write? Does that happen to anyone else? So grocery lists are really a great idea unless of course you don’t put the important stuff on there. Or you can’t find it when it’s time to go to the grocery store. Oh I know, there’s a thing called the phone, and a thing called the digital list, but I’m not a technologically-advanced girl. I still get my Mary Englebright planner for Christmas every year and write everything down with a pencil in my planner that I keep on my desk. Maybe someone should try to teach me how to use technology. But it sounds too hard. And I was going to say if it’s not broke, don’t fix it! But maybe it is broke? Shouldn’t it be broken, not broke?

    If you’ve been reading my blog, you will see that I really have been trying to cook. I look up all these recipes. I write down the ingredients, I go to the grocery store but seriously, how am I supposed to find the ingredient if I don’t even know what it is. What the heck is xanthan gum? Where is it? Is it gum? Would it be in the candy aisle? Arrowroot flour? What the heck? Lupin powder? Grass fed butter?!?! Does butter even eat?!? And if it did why wouldn’t it choose something more appetizing than grass?!? How am I supposed to know what these things are? Do I have to Google items before I put them on my grocery list to see what they are? That’s so much work!

    I dread going to the grocery store. There is nothing worse! I don’t know how people like it. Do you know that scene in Three Men and a Baby when it’s Tom Selleck’s turn to change the baby’s diaper and he’s on his way to work and he says, “I will give you a million dollars if you change the diaper?” Or something like that? And he’s completely serious? That’s how I feel about grocery shopping. I would give someone a million dollars if I had it before I would step foot in a grocery store.

    That’s why this online ordering has completely changed my life. When I do it right. The other day I did it and I know I ordered three cases of water and when the nice grocery lady brought out my groceries, they weren’t in there. I asked about it and she said well we should look at my receipt together since she was there and sure enough I didn’t even order them. I know I ordered them but then I thought I got the wrong size so I tried to erase them and put the right size, but maybe I erased them all together. So I went through all the effort of ordering online so I would not have to go in the grocery store, but yet I still had to go in the grocery store because I forgot my water! Well, that’s disappointing.

    What about those people whose job it is to grocery shop for people?!!? Could there be a worse job?!?! I can’t think of one.

    Also, grocery stores are so chaotic and confusing they make me feel all emotional and vulnerable. One time, a couple years ago, I went to the grocery store when I was having a really tough day. And also, I couldn’t find the tortillas. Why are they not with the bread? Wouldn’t that make sense?

    On this day, a man stops me and introduces himself. He says he’s my neighbor and he lives up the road and he sees me walking my dogs all the time. And then he asks me how I am? I mean really sincerely asks me how I am. Although he could have just been being polite. Well, I don’t know if it was just the stress of the grocery store or my failure to locate the tortillas on my first try, but all of a sudden, I just started bawling. I started crying hysterically to this stranger in the grocery store that I didn’t even really know! He just stopped me in the grocery store to say hello. I just couldn’t help myself. Feeling stressed, emotional, and lost in the grocery store and someone asks how I am? I fall apart! Poor guy! I bet he sure learned his lesson. Never stop someone you know in the grocery store and say hi.

    I can picture him from now on with a baseball cap pulled low so he can’t see anyone while he’s pushing his cart really fast in the grocery store, just trying to get his groceries and get out of there as fast as he can. He’s probably traumatized from that one time he was trying to be polite and say hi to a neighbor.

    Come on, am I really the only person who has cried to a stranger in the grocery store? I totally blame the grocery store. If someone stopped me in the library and asked how I was, no matter what kind of day I had been having, I would’ve been filled with positive things to say because, you know, it’s a library. Not a grocery store. I feel all Zen and stuff in the library.

    How are you?
    -random neighbor in the library.

    Great! Because, well, books!
    -I’d say while gesturing to the walls of books around me.

    Libraries always make me feel better. Grocery stores never do.

    If I ever win the lottery, the first thing I would do would be to hire someone to do my grocery shopping. Not just do my grocery shopping, but also to read my mind and know exactly what groceries to get so I don’t even have to think about groceries ever again. My kitchen would just always be full with exactly what I want without me doing a thing. Like magic!

    Most people would pay off debts if they won the lottery or buy a boat. I would just ensure I never had to think about groceries ever again.

    Until I win the lottery, I guess I will have to continue dealing with the worst place on earth.

  • Death at a Winery

    We all have that one friend who talks to everyone, right? The type of person who will just talk to a stranger for 20 minutes about their stubbed toe. I have a friend like that. I can’t take him anywhere without him having conversations with strangers, adding half an hour to our trip. The other day he talked to the woman who worked at Port City Java for 10 minutes about some experience he had buying donuts at the Donut Inn. And there was even a line behind us!

    And don’t even get me started about going out to dinner with him. He spends half of it talking to the server. He has all his normal lines. I can predict what he’s going to say right before he says it. The sweet little server comes over and asks if we have any questions. He laughs and he says, “I have plenty of questions. Pull up a chair. Or did you just mean about the menu?” Then he laughs at how hilarious he is. I swear I think there are servers who see us sit down and then they pay a different server 50 bucks to take the table for them.

    I’m kidding, it’s funny and sort of entertaining. I’m just not that kind of person. If I see someone I know in the grocery store, I will duck my head and turn the other way and hope he/she doesn’t see me. Even if I really like them! I don’t even know why I do it. I guess I just don’t particularly like talking to people.

    Now, if my friend saw someone he knew in the grocery store, he would literally start running, tripping over his own feet, pushing his cart as fast as he can just to talk to some PTA mom or other acquaintance.

    We recently took a little trip to the mountains. We got away for a few days. We walked around little towns and looked in all the quaint shops. Of course, my friend had to talk to every shop owner for 10 minutes about this antique or that antique or some casserole dish that his grandmother had.

    During this trip, we went to some wineries. I love wineries. I do my tasting quickly, I pick my wine, and I go find a peaceful place to sit and drink and enjoy the company of the people I’m with. Obviously, my chatty friend does wineries differently.

    It just so happened that the owner of the winery was the one who was doing our tasting. As you can imagine, my friend had a field day chatting with the owner. He’s really a very friendly and charming guy and people enjoy talking to him. People who enjoy talking to strangers that is. I’m not one of those people. But I just smile and drink the wine. By this point, she knows all about his record collection and his boat that he can’t drive.

    Finally, the tasting is over and I pry him away from the poor owner, who probably has a job to do like running a winery, and we go outside and enjoy our wine.

    We know the winery closes at five so at about 4:55 we finish our wine and collect our glasses to go return them. I can’t wait to get some dinner. I’m starving by now. I send my friend to return the glasses and I go and use the restroom.

    When I come out of the restroom, of course he is talking to the owner and when he sees me, his face lights up and he says ,”the owner just asked if we would like a private tour and see where the wine is made.”

    Ummm….. no.

    His face is beaming with excitement. But my mind goes somewhere else. Why would the owner do that? It is closing time. Doesn’t she want to just kick everybody out so she can clean up and enjoy her evening? Is my friend really that charming and chatty that she wants to spend more time listening to him?

    I got a little suspicious at that point. I do read too many thrillers and watch too much Law & Order, but I was very skeptical about this overly friendly winery owner who wants to take time out of her day, after the winery has closed, to give us a little private tour.

    But of course I don’t say any of that so I just put a big smile on my face and say “ Oh! Wow! That would be amazing! That is so nice of you.”

    She leads us through these heavy wooden doors to this huge dark room full of wine vats. She starts telling us about the room and how it was built by hand and with refurbished wood or something like that. I’m not listening. I’m pretending to listen but looking for the nearest exits. At this point, my friend is talking about how great he is at recycling because he rinses out every single container and lets it dry before he puts it in the recycling. Umm… does the recycling really care if it is dry or not?

    She’s telling us how the temperature stays cool even on hot days. She talks about how her husband ‘s family built it. And of course, my friend is fascinated. He’s asking so many questions and talking about his similar experiences. Although he’s never owned a winery or built a room with big wine vats in it that can stay cool even in hot temperatures, I’m sure he can relate somehow.

    I, on the other hand, am getting more and more suspicious the farther we go into the deep, dark, very large room. This owner could kill us and throw our bodies in one of these wine vats, and we would never be found! Never be found!

    Don’t be silly I tell myself. There’s no way she can get us in those vats I think to myself. She’s not He-Man. She can’t just pick us up and toss us up and over.

    She eventually leads us to a dark winding staircase. There is an awkward looking man at the top who steps aside to let us pass. I wonder if he’s her partner and they’re secretly going to kill us together.

    My friend sees him, and a big old smile fills his face (oblivious that these might be our last few moments on earth) and ask him how his day was. He says, “quitting time, huh?” And then gives him a pat on the back or a high five or something like they have known each other since childhood.

    Now I’m getting even more nervous because I have realized that this is how she’s going to get us in the vats. From here, it will be easy. She will just kick us over the railing, and we’ll fall headfirst into one of those vats down below. They are so perfectly placed below. I can’t imagine they are for anything else. Well, maybe wine.

    I sure hope it’s one that’s filled with wine that we get thrown into. I think it would hurt if it was empty and at least if it was a full one, I can drink all the wine I want before I die there thanks to my friend being overly welcoming and trusting everybody. I give him a look, trying to let him know to stay as far away from the railing as possible, but he just smiles at me and actually leans over the railing taking it all in like it’s the most majestic view in the world.

    The owner then says, as a very special treat, (which she NEVER does she says), she will show us the lab. This is where the chemist works she explains. She takes us into a small room that looks like a high school science lab with beakers, droppers, and microscopes. I’m already scanning the room looking for something I can use as a weapon.

    There is a little room off the to the side. She is very excited about that and says, “Oh, come over here. Come in this room.” I put my shoulder and my head in that room, and she says, “No no, come all the way in this room! It’s soundproofed.”

    What??? Soundproofed! I’m so scared I nearly pee my pants! Oh gosh, this is it. This is how we’re going down. In a soundproof wine tasting room in the middle of nowhere!

    I look at my friend who has the biggest smile on his face and is just chatting away happily about music and some band he used to travel with and some soundproof recording rooms he’s been in.

    He has no clue that we are about to be murdered by the winery owner. No clue!!! It’s up to me to save our lives! Us women literally have to do everything.

    She explains that they need a soundproof room to taste the wine so they can taste it better. Why does it need to be quiet to taste wine? You don’t taste wine with your ears! It’s definitely an excuse to lock us in a soundproof room. I shoot my friend a terrified, “what the heck are we going to do,” face and he gives me an odd look and ignores it.

    I think back and try to remember all the self-defense moves I learned back in 1999 when I took a woman’s self-defense class before going into the Peace Corps. Elbow on the collarbone was all that I could remember. I start preparing to do the elbow on the collarbone move, if needed. My friend looks at me quickly, and I do an elbow up and point to my collarbone move hoping he will understand that we must do the elbow on the collarbone move together if necessary. One on each collar bone. He looks at me a little confused but then continues chatting away happily to the winery owner.

    I’m getting claustrophobic in this small, soundproofed room and I just know I have to do something fast to save our lives. When the winery owner glances at me, I quickly make the, “I’m watching you” sign that Robert De Niro makes in Meet the Parents. You know the two fingers pointing to my eyes and then out to her.

    I think that scares her. She knows I’m on to her now, so she lets us out of the soundproof room. Huge sigh of relief, but we were still not out of the woods. I wouldn’t even know my way out of here. And those doors looked heavy, and I bet she locked them behind us. I pressed my body against the wall across from the railing as we made our way back to the staircase. Yes, it looks weird, but I was not getting near that railing.

    She tried to let me go first down the stairs but, uh uh! No way! She wanted me to go down first so she can easily kick me down the stairs? I don’t think so, Mrs. Winery Lady. I once again do that, “I’m watching you,” sign and insist she goes first.

    Then, as a special treat, she says as she’s leading us down the stairs, she will show us where they bottle the wine. She once again says she never shows anyone that. Then why? Oh, why? Is she showing us? We are not that cool. We are not that nice. We don’t even know that much about wine. Is it because my friend is so chatty that she finds it endearing? Or is it because my friend is so chatty that she plans to kill him to put the rest of the world out of their misery? And she must kill me too because I’m a witness?

    I’m very aware of my surroundings. I’m watching everything. I’m not even listening as my friend chats about some article he wrote for some magazine about some brewery and how their canning station looked a lot like this bottling one. Blah blah blah, he’s sounding like the teacher from Snoopy to me with no realization we are in imminent danger!

    I must get us out of here and fast. The longer we stay, the more opportunities we have to be murdered, and the more relaxed we feel, the more we will let down out guard. Well, not me. Because I’m onto her.

    I can say I need to use the restroom!  But then she might lead me to a private dark restroom and lock me in while she murders chatty Cathy first.

    Then, I had a brilliant idea.

    “Oh no! I think I left my phone in the restroom in the tasting room.” I exclaimed, with a worried look on my face. “I’m expecting some important work emails. How do I get out of here?”

    The winery owner looks disappointed.

    I start walking quickly in the direction I thought we came from. After a quick scan of the room, I realize I was heading the wrong way. I spy the big heavy doors on the other side, and I walk as fast as I can to them. She must’ve had some secret button in her pocket to unlock them when she realized her plan was foiled because they push right open when I get to them. I look back to make sure my friend was following me because I really wanted to save his life also, but, if it came down to it, I would have to make a tough decision.

    Luckily my friend and the owner were coming out of the door. I went into the restroom knowing I wouldn’t find anything.

    I come out to more chatting, but I quickly cut my friend off and thank the owner politely.

    I drag my friend outside as fast as I can.

    “What in the world was wrong with you in there???” My friend looks at me with a concerned expression.

    “We almost died!” I exclaimed.

    “What?!?!”

    “That winery owner was going to kill us! She was going to murder us! I saved our lives.”

    “Ok….. thank you?”

    Hmmm… I question my behavior just a little at that point when we are out in the sunshine and fresh air. I guess maybe it’s possible she wasn’t going to kill us and was just being polite BUT better safe than sorry and it’s always best to be prepared. The world can be a dangerous place.

    “Geez, I can’t take her ANYWHERE,” my friend whispers to himself as he walks to the car and I can hear the eye roll in his voice.

  • The Wine Lady

    I love wine. I’ve always loved wine. I mean, everyone loves wine I know, but probably not as much as I do. We moved to North Carolina in 2013 and the thing I knew I would miss the most were the wineries in Virginia.

    Before we moved here, I said we have to look and see if there are any wineries in Wilmington or we cannot move. We Googled and there was one! Right in the middle of Wilmington, North Carolina! How lucky! Ok, we can move there. We decided to go there as soon as we moved here and it ended up being a wine shop in the middle of a strip mall. That isn’t a winery. Boo!

    I know for those local people there’s Duplin Winery but that muscadine wine has a very distinct taste and it’s just not for me. Blah! No offense to anyone who likes that stuff. As you will find out by the time you get to the end of this post, I am not quite the wine connoisseur that you would expect, so that muscadine wine could be good and I don’t even know it.

    Virginia has the most beautiful wineries ever. I definitely recommend going. People go for the wine of course, but it’s more than that. People go for the experience. People go for the atmosphere. The tasting rooms are like great big cozy living rooms where you can just hang out with your friends. There are board games and pretty views and sometimes even a roaring fire if it’s chilly outside. There’s usually large outdoor areas with tables and chairs where you can hang out and enjoy the view. Back in the day your kids could run wild and climb trees. They could bring soccer balls and accidentally hit people in the face or spill wine and occasionally break glasses and no one minded. They would apologize and laugh at it all. We were all one big winery family. Even the strangers. These days, most vineyards that allow kids allow only “well-behaved kids.” What exactly is a “well-behaved kid?” Is there such a thing? I can only speak from experience with my kids so I say no, but maybe they do exist.

    I love the the feeling that thoughts of wineries give me. I call it my winery feeling. A day spent in the sunshine with family and friends. The crisp air, the kids running around and playing, the sound of laughter. Oh and eating cheese. After wine, cheese would be my second favorite food. If you consider wine food. I do. It makes a good dinner sometimes when my cooking is a big failure, which, if you’ve been reading this blog, you know that it often is. “Oh well, it’s fine, I will just have wine for dinner,” I say with a shrug. (of course I don’t feed my kids wine for dinner when it’s a failure. They just starve. Kidding! Doritos work just fine for dinner in those instances.)

    Some wineries also have pizza places attached to them and even breweries. Even cabins! Everything you need! You could practically live there! I have such fond memories of days spent with families and friends, and just a feeling of acceptance and camaraderie and slowing down. And the beauty can literally take your breath away. How can you not feel calm and at peace while looking at something so beautiful?

    I’ve always wanted to open my own winery. I wanted to create that space for people to feel how wineries have always made me feel. I wanted everyone to feel that winery feeling that I get.

    I wanted to be that winery owner who is behind the bar doing tastings and just chatting with all the customers about how she bought the winery and built it from the ground up. The one sharing her wisdom and her love and knowledge of the wines. I picture myself strolling through the rows of my vineyard every evening after I close the winery. I would talk to the grapes and I would encourage them. “ I see you, girl! You’re looking nice and plump tonight! You’ve got this!” Haven’t you heard that plants grow better when you speak to them? I’m sure that grapes do, too.

    In my imaginary vineyard, I would stomp all the grapes with my bare feet I Love Lucy style. Can you imagine how good that would feel?!? Of course I would wear a flowy white dress, and I would hold it up to my knees while I stomped around a big bin full of grapes. My head would be thrown back in laughter and I’d be listening to music from Dar Williams. I mean I HAVE to be better at owning a winery than I am at feeding my family, right?

    But here’s the thing. After all the wineries that I have gone to, after all the hours spent listening to wine experts explain how each wine is aged in oak or stainless steel and all the hints of blackberries, and fermentation, after all the wine I have drank, I STILL know nothing about wine. Except I like it. And it all kind of tastes the same. I know! Big GASP from all the real wine people reading this.

    I know I would have to be knowledgeable while I pour the wine and tell my guests about it. I know I need to say things like this has been aged in oak for six months and you can taste hints of strawberries and pomegranate in it. Or maybe I’ll just make stuff up when I pour wine and see if anybody notices.

    I will say things like

    “This wine has been aged in some kind of barrel for some amount of time and there might be hints of dog hair in there. Cheers!”

    Or maybe, “This one has hints of cat dander. We have stray cats on the vineyard that come to visit. My mom brought them with her in her purse and just left them.”

    Or something like, “This wine was aged in my bathtub because I ran out of those barrel thingies. There might be some toilet germs from when I flush the toilet and probably some bathroom cleaner from when I cleaned the bathtub to make the wine. And I had some leftover strawberries and blueberries from dinner last week so I threw them in there. I also had some leftover lettuce so I figured that would taste good. Why not give it a try? Why not? Has anyone ever put vegetables in wine? They put them in smoothies now. What’s so special about fruit? We are all about inclusion at this vineyard.”

    You never know, people might like it. Maybe they won’t come for the wine. Maybe they will come for the experience, the atmosphere, and my charming personality. Oh! Maybe they can bring their own wine? Maybe it will be the first BYOW winery. Bring your own wine winery. I might be onto something.

    Or maybe I should give up on the winery-owning dream. And my cooking dream too. That’s fine. I have plenty of other dreams. I have to be good at something, right? I’ll keep trying.

  • Pesto Problems

    “Let’s make Pesto,” my brother said.  Pesto… what exactly is Pesto? Basil, right? It’s one of those things I never think about, never order at restaurants, or have ever even thought about making. I know it’s green stuff that goes on pasta and it tastes good, so I said sure. We had a rare night without my kids at home so we could make whatever we wanted. I think the plan was my brother wanted to cook for me, but, since you know what a great chef I am, I just had to take over. I probably should’ve just left it alone and let the kid cook for me.

    Well, it’s a partnership, so we decided to do it together. He pulled up a recipe on his phone and we went to the grocery store together. He was naming off the ingredients and I was getting them off the shelves and putting them in the cart. We got some pine nuts, (which took us forever to find because they are not by the nuts. How does that make sense?  It has the word NUTS in the name!) garlic, lemon juice, Parmesan cheese, soy milk? I’m just getting whatever he is reading off the recipe. He mentions something about pesto, and I said that must be where the pasta sauces are because I’ve seen it there. There were a bunch of pesto pasta sauces in jars, and I told him that is not what we’re looking for because we are making our own. Then I see a little jar of clumpy looking pesto stuff and I tell him this must what we need to make the pesto. Then we also found some arugula because the recipe calls for arugula. Looking back, I should’ve noticed the recipe didn’t call for any basil and even I know that basil is the main ingredient in pesto. I thought that was the stuff in the jar maybe? But my brother was reading the recipe, and I was just following what he said. I swear I did not hear him say basil at all so I’m not sure this is entirely my fault. I am half deaf though, but we will ignore that fact.

    So we go home, and we start following the recipe. We put some pine nuts and lemon juice and garlic and pesto stuff in the food processor. We follow the recipe and add some soy milk to make it creamy. Then we mix it all in with the pasta. Throw in some parmesan cheese. I think we added way too much soy milk because it looks like soup at this point. I thought it said two cups, but it must have been wrong. I’m sure the recipe was written wrong. Typo probably. You can barely see the pasta under the green pool of liquid. It is a very pretty light green color though so at least I have something pretty to look at.

    It’s fine, it’s fine, I say. I will just pour out some of this liquid and then it will be perfect. I drain some into the sink and then continued mixing, but it still was just a watery goopy mess. The parmesan has also melted in a very gooey way.  Is pesto supposed to be so watery? Oh, we forgot the arugula! Like adding arugula into the watery goopy mess will help anything but you never know. It’s worth a try.

    So I add the arugula and it’s still a liquidly light green mess with arugula leaves floating in it. This looks great, I declare with a smile on my face.   I think we did it right. I spoon it onto plates. I know full well that neither one of us will admit it’s awful. We will just eat it and say it tastes good. So it will be a success even if it isn’t. There isn’t a kid judge here who will wrinkle his nose and make a gagging face while spitting my hard work onto his plate.

    As I am walking towards the table with the plates in my hand, I stop and glance at that little jar of pesto stuff. I pick it up and look closely at it. Pesto? Did we just use pesto to make pesto? I think we did. We just used delicious ready-made pesto to make soy milk pesto flavored soup? How could we have spent all that time making pesto out of pesto and had it come out looking nothing like pesto????  

    So we boil more noodles, and we use the actual pesto from the jar to put on our pasta. It is delicious. I consider it a success. A successful pesto meal. Even if we didn’t make it ourselves. Maybe we’ll try again next time. Or just buy ready-made pesto since it’s so delicious and easy.

    We can’t throw out food though, so we save the soup pesto mess we made and put it in the fridge. We will probably eat it later. Maybe. Or just look at it. It is a beautiful color after all.

  • The Bird Lady

    I know this is a blog about cooking failures, and don’t worry, there are plenty more cooking failures for you all but today can we just talk about birds and birdfeeders? It’s a bit of a success story if you read until the end.

    My mom is one of those crazy bird ladies, in addition to being a crazy cat lady, she has probably at least 7 to 9 birdfeeders in her yard. She has them all hooked up to little pulley systems where she can lower them down to fill it, and then use a pulley to string it back up and hook it with little carabiner clips. It’s really a very complicated system and I don’t even know how she did it. Maybe she’s a secret scientist. Or an inventor. She’s been like this for I don’t know how many years. Every time I go over there, I just think of how much work it is and how much money she spends on birdseed. Never had my heart leapt for joy at the sight of a bird.

    She’s the type of bird person who gets so excited when she sees a (insert your favorite bird here) that you would think she had won the lottery! She has a little app on her phone that recognizes bird calls and last time she visited, she came in from my deck and said, “Oh my goodness! I just heard 38 different kinds of birds in your backyard,” like it was the greatest thing to ever happen in history. (Eye roll) Don’t get me wrong, birds are cute and all but they don’t do it for me. They all sort of look the same. I know, I know, all the real birders are gasping in astonishment and disapproval. I can’t help it, I like what I like. And it’s not birds. I will stop and oooh and ahhh at every dog that passes but birds…. They have never made me stop in my tracks.

    BUT THEN I turned 50.

    Four days before my 50th birthday i was sitting on my couch reading and then I glanced out the window and saw a bird hanging out in my tree. Just an average bird but I immediately stopped what I was doing to stare at the bird. What an incredible creature, I thought. Look at those tiny feet! I had never seen anything cuter! And how soft do those feathers look? If I was a bird I would happily just snuggle with myself and not need this silly stuffed Snoopy I sleep with every night.

    Then, with a desire that I can’t even remember the last time I felt, I NEEDED a bird feeder. Needed one. Like my life depended on it. I hopped on Amazon right away.

    So I ordered a bird feeder. I could hardly wait for it to come. I checked Amazon every 5 minutes it seemed to see when it would be delivered. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve! I could hardly sleep from the excitement of it all. I was going to be a bird lady! A real bird lady! Should I add that to my resume?

    Finally, my bird feeder came. I ripped open the box and admired my beautiful new birdfeeder. I pictured all the little birds with full bellies after hanging out at my birdfeeder. I pictured them telling all their friends and then I would have the best yard ever for birdfeeder parties. Well, other than my mother’s, but she lives 350 miles away. I rushed outside to hang up my new birdfeeder!

    And then I realize that I have no birdseed. Of course, I know you need birdseed to fill your birdfeeder, but I was so wrapped up in the joy of being a bird lady that I forgot to buy birdseed! Where can I get birdseed? Do they have a birdseed store? After some research, I found out they have birdseed at my local Food Lion so I ran out to buy some. And that 10 pound bag lasted about five hours. How in the heck does that much birdseed disappear so quickly? Aren’t birds little? How can they eat 10 pounds of birdseed in five hours? So I ran out to buy some more. And now I just order it with every grocery order. And sometimes I order it on Amazon in between grocery shops.

    But geez, those birds love my cooking! They swarm around my birdfeeder. There are these big black guys who hog all the food and there are tiny little birds standing off to the side, waiting patiently for their turn. So then I decided, well, of course I need another bird feeder for those little birds. I will just very politely tell the big birds and that pesky squirrel that this new birdfeeder is not for them. So I ordered another birdfeeder. And then I ordered another birdfeeder. I absolutely did not need another birdfeeder, but I couldn’t even control my fingers when I went to Amazon and started scrolling bird feeders. Do you know that they have solar ones and at night they light up all cute and pretty so that the birds can find their way to their food when it’s dark outside? Do you know they have stained glass birdfeeders? Who ever thought a birdfeeder could be pretty? It was Like this compulsion, I just couldn’t control my fingers. I did show some self-control, though, and stopped at three birdfeeders. For now.

    Who knew I would have to take a third job to feed all the neighborhood birds? Kidding! Kind of. But it’s totally worth it because as I mentioned in the beginning, this is a blog about cooking and these neighborhood birds love my cooking. They just love my cooking! They eat it all and then they’re just waiting every morning for more of my cooking. Maybe I should’ve been a bird mom. Or maybe I should try feeding my kids birdseed.

  • The Summer I Could Cook

    About seven years ago, my brother graduated from high school. He lived in Florida and he needed a little change of scenery for the summer. He wanted to get away and get his thoughts together and try to figure out what he was doing with his life. That’s the big question all 18-year-olds have. So, we decided he would come stay with me for the summer. I had a friend who owned an electric company and was looking for workers, so I got him a summer job. The plan was he would come for the summer and then go back to Florida and most likely go to community college there.

    Honestly, I do not remember what I fed my kids before my brother came to stay with me, but it must have been something, right? I mean they are still alive. It might’ve been those Purdue chicken nuggets. They are technically not frozen. They are sort of fresh and refrigerated so they seemed healthier to me. I was also pretty good at making Kraft mac & cheese, and really good at making those Bob Evans microwave mashed potatoes. I think I also excelled at toasting a piece of bread, then putting a slice of super processed American cheese on it and cutting it up in little squares. I think I did try to throw in a piece of fruit and some frozen peas sometimes. It must’ve been something like that.

    But that summer, when my brother was here, I was going to pretend I could cook. Just for the summer. I could fake it for three months. I was excited because I always wanted to be one of those people who cook. Even a fake person who could cook. Maybe after three months of pretending I might really turn into one of those people who can cook. Spoiler alert, I didn’t. But I really did a great job of faking it. Kind of.

    I must first share that my brother has never really had a home-cooked meal. He probably has once or twice when he went to friends’ houses but as far as his own house and growing up, he never had a home-cooked meal. They went out for every single meal. Going out to a restaurant was the norm for him and he was actually quite sick of it.  I already had that going for me because first, he had no idea what a home-cooked meal was or what it was really supposed to taste like so that definitely worked to my advantage. I’m not saying my food would be better than a restaurant but maybe it comes with different expectations. This is not a restaurant! Lower your expectations!

    Another advantage I had was that he liked everything. Everything.  I made lemon chicken that summer that was so sour it made everyone’s face pucker when they tried it.  But not my brother, he ate it and said it was good.  Hey- maybe he doesn’t like everything… Maybe he was just being polite.

    Every meal was so stressful because I had to act like it was simple for me. Faking who you are every day is exhausting.  I had to act like I was easily whipping everything together like Martha Stewart when really I was sweating bullets, trying not to be intimidated by the meat, and just praying that the meal came out edible. I was up late Googling recipes and then reading them over and over and over memorizing them so it would look effortless when I made them. I was also hoping that during this experiment I would find something that my kids would like. That didn’t happen. But the summer went on and I became good at faking I was a person who can cook and I think my brother actually believed me.  Or he’s good at faking it too.

    Time flies as it often does and finally, it was mid-August. My brother was good company, and the kids loved him. I would miss my brother very much BUT I also was a little relieved to be able to go back to being the woman who cannot cook. After much discussion though, it was decided that my brother would not return back to Florida. He would stay here and work and go to the local community college.

    I called my mom to share the news with her, and I was crying hysterically when I told her. She replied, “You love Lucas! You love having him there! Why in the world are you crying?”

    I said, between sniffles and sobs, “Now I’m going to have to pretend to cook forever!”

    But I didn’t. I came clean and told my brother I cannot cook.  Maybe he knew?  I like to think not because I faked it so well.  He didn’t care about my cooking, and I saw that it was silly to try to be something I am not to impress someone.  Yes, I know that is a lesson I should have learned 20 years ago.

    Now, six years since that summer, my brother and I are a cooking failure team.  We have our own little failure club.  Of course, anyone is welcome to join but no one does.  Does anyone really want to be a failure?  He’s my little sous chef and we cook our failures together. We hold our breath in anticipation, watching my kids take the first bite.  After three bites they declare they don’t like it, go back upstairs to play video games, and my brother and I high five and shrug.  We’ll try again tomorrow we say. You can’t win them all.  Or any in this case.

  • The bread maker that was going to change my life



    When my son was diagnosed with celiac, I was devastated!! I love bread! Oh wait- it’s not about me. I was devastated for him I mean. He loves bread. A life without bread? Is there anything worse? No little Hawaiian rolls at Thanksgiving?!? I think I actually cried thinking about that.

    My brother and I eat gluten free when my son is around but every once in a while, when he’s not, we eat gluten and we feel like we are in heaven. Over and over again we just keep saying between bites and even during bites, “Gluten is SO good.”

    It will be fine, I thought. There are so many different brands and kinds of gluten free bread that there has to be one kind, just ONE kind that tastes like bread. Nope. Not one.

    I bought gluten-free bread after gluten-free bread after gluten-free bread trying to find one that tasted like bread. I should’ve thought ahead and made videos of my kid’s face after tasting each one. And then made one of those little fast forward videos kids make these days with all his faces. That would be hilarious! But I didn’t think of it and don’t know how to do it but I’m sure you can imagine his face after eating each one. If not, buy yourself some gluten free bread and look at yourself in the mirror as you eat it.

    I went to every grocery store in Wilmington. Every grocery store! Even those fancy ones that I don’t usually go to, and bought every single brand of bread just hoping that my kid would eat one of them and not make one of those faces that looks like he’s going to throw up. No success.

    It’s fine, I told him. Who needs bread when there are so many other delicious foods? Then I would drop him off at school and run right to Bagel King. I’d eat my egg and cheese on a gluten-full bagel in my car with sunglasses and a baseball cap so no one will recognize. I felt like I was doing something illegal. The sunglasses and baseball hat helped ease my guilt. The bagel was the best thing I had ever eaten.

    I joined a couple of Facebook celiac groups which were not very helpful because I think they were for people who can actually cook. One helpful thing was everyone suggested making your own bread. They raved about their homemade bread. Apparently, you can buy a bread maker with a gluten-free setting?!? What?!!? That’s amazing. Sounds simple, right? You just put all your ingredients in, press the start button, press the gluten-free setting and bam! Delicious gluten-free bread. This was going to be PERFECT!

    So I bought a bread maker with a gluten-free setting, and I bought all the ingredients for gluten-free bread. Some ingredients were weird and hard to find but I’m an expert at Wilmington’s grocery stores now so it was fine.

    My brother and I were ready to make bread! We were positive! We are optimistic! We were going to make such great bread that it would be the only thing we would have for dinner. Just bread tonight because it’s so delicious. We would eat it with butter that would just melt on the warm bread. It would fill us up and we would just sit around the table and talk about how great I am at making gluten-free bread and comment on how it tastes just like regular bread. Actually, better than regular bread, but all due to my cooking. We would start having just gluten free bread for every meal. Makes my cooking adventures easier. Don’t worry, I would throw a vegetable on the side of the plate every now and then. (which my kid won’t eat)

    So we set out to make this gluten-free bread with the most positive attitude there is. How could we fail? You put the ingredients in, and you press a button!

    I carefully read the manual for the bread maker. A little friendly reminder said, “please be aware that using the gluten-free setting will not take the gluten out of bread. Really, bread maker?  I was feeling really confident at that point.

    We carefully measured everything. We followed the directions perfectly. We put in the wet ingredients, then put in the dry ingredients, then I made a little hole with my finger and put in the yeast. I switched it on the gluten free setting and pressed start. It all went so well.

    Until…… I look down on the counter, turned to my brother, and said, “Uh Oh! I think this was supposed to go in the bottom of the bread pan before we added all the ingredients.” and I held up that little metal spinner thing that was most definitely supposed to go in the bottom of the bread pan to mix it.

    Will it work without it?  Maybe… Should I leave it? No, of course not!  That is what mixes the bread.  Somehow, we needed to get this little metal spinning thing into the bottom of the bread pan quickly!

    It’s fine, it’s fine, I said to my brother.  I told him that I would just reach in with both hands and separate the ingredients quickly while he reaches in with the little spinner thing and sticks it down there where it goes. It will be just fine.

    So I stick both my hands in the middle of the bread maker and pull it to the sides and tell my brother to stick that little spinner thing in. But of course, it’s a little tricky to do when you can’t see so it takes him a few tries, but he finally gets it! We take our hands out and everything kind of goes back to normal. Kind of.  We are both standing there with our hands covered in bread mix. and I say, I’m sure we’ll be just fine. I’m sure we didn’t mess anything up with that whole dry ingredients first, wet ingredients second, make a little hole for the yeast thing. How important can that be? Apparently, very important.

    So that turned out to be a disaster. Of course, it was due to our little mishap and the next time would be much better.

    Except, it wasn’t. It was supposed to be “cake batter consistency” but ours was more like water consistency for some reason.

    Next try was hard as a rock.

    Next try was wet and soggy inside although the outside looked great!  That loaf really fooled us!

    Next try had a hole in the side.  How does that even happen?

    Next try just tasted gross.

    My optimism faded with each failed attempt.

    Do you think the bread maker is defective? And it’s not my fault?  Should I send it back for a new one?

    It was time to face the truth and accept defeat.  The bread maker was NOT going to change my life.

    So, I put the bread maker away for a while, and bought gluten free bread hoping my kid’s tastes would change over time.  They haven’t so I think it’s time to bring that bread maker out and try again.  Things could be different this time. Miracles can happen. Wish me luck

  • Tacos

    There is one food that I make successfully now. I make tacos at least once a week. Sometimes even two times. It is the one meal that my family eats. Almost always. I have perfected it down to science, but it was not easy getting here. Tacos always scared me. Why are there so many different kinds? Why are there so many things you can put in them and why do they always break? Who invented a food that literally falls apart at the first bite? Couldn’t they have done better? And how did a broken food become so popular? I just stayed away from tacos because, first, I didn’t know how to make them, and second, they seem like a lot of work. I know people say tacos are easy to make, but it just seems like I was setting myself up for failure if I tried. There were plenty other failures to be had that required fewer ingredients.

    One day, while on vacation, my family and I were passing through the Shenandoah Valley, so we stopped at my friend Lee’s house for dinner. She made tacos and I couldn’t believe it, but my kid ate nine tacos! Nine tacos! How can anyone eat nine tacos? Especially a skinny little seven-year-old? I’ve never seen my kid eat that much. I was literally in shock. I kept looking under the table to see if maybe he was hiding them in his shoes just to be polite and trying to boost her taco-making ego.

    How in the world did she do that? Magic? She taught me how to make tacos and gave me taco seasoning that she orders online to take home with me. Easy enough. I went home all enthusiastic feeling like I would probably be able to open my own Mexican restaurant in the next week or so. I was already thinking of names. Loca Brita Tacos? Brita’s Brilliant Tacos? Best Brita Tacos? I will figure out the name later.

    First attempt, I didn’t drain the meat. Who knew you must drain the meat? I didn’t read that anywhere. (except years later I noticed that it’s written on the back of the taco seasoning packet but, in my defense, at that time, I was using spices in a Ziploc bag that Lee gave me).

    Second attempt, I burned the meat. Who knew you have to mix it so frequently? Give me a break, taco meat. Can’t you just sit there and tan a little bit without burning? Who knew taco meat was so clingy and demanding of attention? I shouldn’t judge, maybe the poor little taco meat had a rough upbringing.

    Third attempt was a bit of a success. I did use the boil in the bag rice because making rice also scares me. How do you know when it’s done? How do you not burn the bottom? Why are there so many different consistencies of rice? Not to mention about 50 different kinds of rice. Jasmine? Basmati?? Long grain??? What is the difference? The rice aisle at the grocery store overwhelms me. Boil in the bag rice was the way to go.

    My friend Lee came to visit me a few years later and taught me how to make rice. I had no idea it could be so easy. Now I’m an expert at making rice. It might be one of the things I do best. My sister was impressed. The last time she came to visit, I made tacos. You know how to make rice, she asked? Yes, I replied proudly, I know how to make rice, like it was the biggest accomplishment of my life.

    Another tip Lee taught me was baking the taco shells. Who knew you had to bake taco shells? I just pulled them out of the box and plopped them on the plate. Then a few years later, I read the box of the taco shells and on the back of it says to bake it at 350 for about 5 minutes. Huh! I’m not sure how I missed that. Who reads the back of the box? People who can’t cook probably do. Or should.

    My friend said that I should have a blog post about all the recipes that are successful and the recipes that I can actually make. I said, one thing? Tacos? That is the only recipe I consistently make that my family eats. That would be a very short blog post because all it would say was, I follow the directions on the back of the packet.

    I ran out of Lee’s taco seasoning and just started buying store brand. It took me a few tries at tacos to realize that normal taco seasoning is too spicy for my kid, and I need to buy the mild. But look at me now! I know how to make rice, toast the taco shells, and follow the directions on the back of the taco seasoning packet. Everyone needs a success story. Everyone needs a win now and then. Mine is tacos.

  • Chick-fil-A Chicken Nuggets

    I was complaining to a friend the other day about all of my cooking failures. She told me that I should have a little grace and not be so hard on myself because I actually had a pretty tough audience. It’s true. She’s right. My kids are such picky eaters. They always have been. If I had a kid like my brother, he would have eaten everything I cooked and I would not be writing this blog. I would be falsely led to believe that I’m an excellent cook. I guess it’s all relative.

    In addition to being picky eaters in the first place, something happened last year to add to the perfect storm that exasperated my cooking failures. My youngest son was diagnosed with celiac disease. It’s not the end of the world, you might be thinking. Yeah right! Maybe for someone who eats meat and potatoes and vegetables but my kid’s favorite foods were Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets and Panera  mac & cheese. Everything this kid liked had gluten in it. He was devastated. I was devastated. I spent a small fortune buying anything gluten-free from every store in Wilmington in the hopes that we would find something he liked. Nothing.

    I stayed up late at night researching recipes and finally, I found it. I found a gluten-free copycat Chick-fil-A chicken nugget recipe this was perfect! I read it 10 times. It didn’t even look that hard. The recipe promised that it would taste just like Chick-fil-A nuggets. The woman who wrote it said her kids actually like these better than Chick-fil-A nuggets. This was going to be great! I couldn’t sleep that whole night because I was so excited about making this recipe and presenting it to my son and having him gobble up every single last nugget and proclaim, “Who needs Chick-fil-A when I’ve got a mom who cooks like you?” He’d have a big adoring smile on his face and I would walk out of the room literally patting my own back and high fiving my brother. I’m sure you can imagine where this is going.


    I waited for my brother to come home from work because he’s my cooking partner. Except that one time with the grill when I almost burned the house down. That time I was going to cook by myself and have it ready to surprise him when he came home from work with a delicious grilled chicken dinner. Instead he came home to black chicken on the grill, smoke still in the air, me in tears and the siding melting off the house. Well, I learned my lesson. My brother now helps with every single cooking failure so I could have someone else to share the blame. Not really. It’s so I could have someone to dial 911 when I set the house on fire.

    We both read the recipe through multiple times. We had all the ingredients on the counter, and we got to work with big, excited smiles on our faces. We probably even danced around a little as we mixed the little gluten-free bread crumbs with the gluten-free flour and prepared the little bowl for the eggs. We did all the dipping stuff and rolling stuff and shaking stuff. Then chicken nuggets looked perfect! Before they were cooked. Perfectly adorable raw Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets made by my brother and I. It was going smoothly so far.

    Neither one of us had ever made anything before where you actually have to fry something. I am talking about dunk it all the way in oil as opposed to just fry it up in the frying pan in a little bit of oil. But that seems simple enough, right? IT WASN’T!

    The oil has to be a certain temperature? There’s a certain device to measure the temperature of the oil? I can’t use my trusted plain old meat thermometer for that? “We can just wing it,” I said confidently to my brother. “Let’s just watch the oil until it looks hot enough.” My brother nods in agreement because I’m sure hot oil looks different than warm oil? So we watch the oil until it looks hot enough, and then we start dunking some chicken nuggets in. Just a few at a time like the recipe says. Oil is splattering all over us and we are jumping back covering our bodies with our hands but then putting on brave faces and moving back in to check on those nuggets. We set the timer for the exact time the recipe said to and we pull those nuggets out carefully with our cute little metal slotted spoon perfect for frying. BLACK!  Not just a little burned but black.

    “Hmmm… the oil is probably too hot. Let’s turn it down just a little bit and then just try again,” I said, undeterred.  But this time the nuggets burned even faster, so I thought maybe the oil was too hot and we just needed to dump the oil and try again. My brother takes the big pot of oil out the back door and dumps it into some brush area we have behind our house. He comes back in, and we try again.

    Can we use canola oil? Can we mix it with olive oil? Why not? Isn’t oil just oil? I didn’t really buy extra vegetable oil, but I had some old containers of oil I was just pulling out of the cabinet.  My brother and I poured new oil in, watched it until it looked hot enough and once again dropped  a few chicken nuggets in. The first batch looked a little funny. My brother said they tasted bad. The second batch was too burned, the third batch didn’t seem to be done quite enough, the oil looked really dirty, my brother ran outside to dump the oil so we could start again. I pulled out every bottle of oil and just sort of poured stuff in to experiment and see what would happen. Batch after batch came out worse than the time before.  We adjusted the time, we adjusted the oil, but nothing worked.

    In the end, five pots of oil had been dumped in the brush, (my brother got his exercise that day) multiple bottles of random oils, eight chicken breasts, my kitchen ended up smelling like a McDonald’s, my brother and I covered in grease splatter and burns, we were left with ONE, yes, ONE, edible homemade gluten-free chicken nugget. (edible is relative in this sentence)

    I put it on a plate and present it to my son. “Here it is! Here is a gluten-free Chick-fil-A nugget. It will taste just like Chick-fil-A! You will be in heaven.”

    “I hope you weren’t very hungry, though,” and I smile and shrug.

    He tasted it and was polite, but he didn’t like it.  And it absolutely did NOT taste like a Chick Fil A chicken nugget. (not that I tasted it because I am vegetarian) The recipe lied. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. Don’t believe recipes. Definitely not prep times.

    We ended up just ordering a gluten-free Domino’s Pizza for him, but I’m not giving up on that Chick-fil-A chicken nugget recipe. I think we’ll try it again another day. Once we recover. And once I do a little research on what exactly went wrong.

    And I know, I know, I know, that you should not dump oil out in their environment like that. It can cause all sorts of damage to the environment, and trust me, I love the environment. I recycle and pick up trash and dream of having an electric car. I still feel bad about all the oil I dumped. Sometimes it even keeps me up in the middle of the night to this day.

    I was panicking and I just had to get rid of that oil because of course, the oil was the problem, and the next batch was going to work out perfectly. Besides, I couldn’t use my normal black bean can for all that oil. I need a really large, sealable, non-breakable container big enough to store all that oil safely. I’m actually hopping on Amazon right now to find one for my next chicken nugget attempt. Let me know if you have this problem also and I will send you the link to the one I find.